Where to watch The Day After Tomorrow (2004)

Trivia & production notes

• The film was inspired by radio host Art Bell and author Whitley Strieber's book The Coming Global Superstorm, with Strieber also writing the film's novelization.
• Twentieth Century Fox acquired the project on May 3, 2002, after a script auction where the initial budget was set at $125 million, though the studio believed it could be reduced to $100 million.
• Filming took place across more than a year, from November 2002 through October 2003, primarily in Montreal and Toronto with additional shoots in New York City and Tokyo.
• The Manhattan destruction sequences used a 13-block-sized LIDAR-scanned 3D model of the city with over 50,000 photographs applied for building textures instead of a traditional miniature set.
• The opening Antarctica flyover sequence, approximately two and a half minutes long, was the longest continuous all-CGI shot in film history at the time, surpassing the opening of Contact from 1997.
• Over 1,000 artists from nine visual effects houses, including Industrial Light Magic and Digital Domain, worked on 416 visual effects shots for the film over more than a year.
• The ice shelf cracking sequence in Antarctica required hand-animation for the falling pieces of ice rather than using simulation software.
• The Japanese version of the film featured an exclusive theme song called More Than a Million Miles performed by a Japanese band coincidentally named Day After Tomorrow.
• The film held the record for the highest opening weekend for a natural disaster film for twenty years until Twisters surpassed it in 2024.
• DVD sales generated $110 million in revenue, bringing the film's total gross across theatrical and home media to over $652 million.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Day After Tomorrow, available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.